[jdom-interest] JDOM 2 list of elements, remove nulls out entries and fails to remove?

[David Wall]

Thanks, Rolf. No, it's definitely not a threading issue.  If you saw my 
second posting, it all works as expected if I create my own 
LinkedList<Element> from the list returned by getChildren().

If you think it's still a possible issue, I can attached the actual 
source code and the sample XML data I was parsing.  I'm not familiar 
with JDOM's internals, but if I remove one Element, does that cause a 
shift for all subsequent elements?  I ask this because I am actually 
creating two lists, one is the main object, and the second is an 
associated "version" object (the main object can have multiple versions 
associated with it).  In the XML, they are ordered like OBJ, OBJVERSION, 
OBJ, OBJVERSION, OBJ, OBJVERSION.

When I created to the two lists (one of OBJ and the other of 
OBJVERSION), I noted that as soon as I deleted the OBJ from the first 
list, the second list already showed a 'null' element at the end of its 
list.  It made me think that the elements are shifting in the live lists 
from JDOM and thus I'm no longer working on the originally retrieved lists.

So, if that's all it is and my usage scenario was bogus before, I'm good 
since I've changed to create my own lists now.  But if you think it 
could still be an issue, I'm happy to send the code and XML to you (it's 
open source code anyway).

Thanks,
David


On 5/11/2012 6:14 PM, Rolf Lear wrote:
> Hi David.
>
> This problem you describe is very concerning, and should not, in 
> 'supported' usage ever happen....
>
> I am wracking my brains to figure out what it could be, but, the only 
> think I can think is that you are accessing the JDOM objects from 
> different threads.... JDOM is *not* thread safe.
>
> If this is happening in a single-threaded mechanism, would it be 
> possible to put together a failing 'test case', any code that shows 
> the problem?
>
> I have to admit that I thought he iteration/remove/add/etc. type code 
> is very well tested, and I would be *very* suprised if there is a 
> problem like this.... in fact, I know that there are test cases that 
> cover this basic condition that you describe... and they never fail....
>
> so, if you can confirm this is all happening in one thread.... and 
> preferably if you can put together an example of the problem, I would 
> look in to it immediately....
>
> Rolf
>
> On 11/05/2012 8:42 PM, David Wall wrote:
>> I believe I've run into a problem that I don't think I had with JDOM 
>> 1.1.3 before I upgraded to 2.0.1.
>>
>> I create a list of elements of a selected element using:
>>
>> List<?> documentVersionElements = 
>> rootElement.getChildren("DocumentVersion", ns);
>>
>> I see that I have 6 elements as expected in my list. None are null.
>>
>> I am basically then trying to find a matching related element id in 
>> that list using something like:
>>
>>                 Element found = null;
>>                 ListIterator<?> iter = documentVersionElements 
>> .listIterator();
>>                 while( iter.hasNext() ) {
>>                     Element checkElement = (Element)iter.next();
>>                     EsfUUID evParentId = new 
>> EsfUUID(checkElement.getChildText("documentId", ns));
>>                     if ( evParentId.equals(id) ) {
>>                         found = checkElement;
>>                         break;
>>                     }
>>                 }
>>
>> Then, assuming I find it (found != null), I process it as expected.  
>> But I then want to remove the found element from the element list so 
>> it cannot be found again, so I use this:
>>
>> documentVersionElements.remove(found);
>>
>> Most of the time, this seems to work as expected, and the 
>> documentVersionElements list is then shorter by 1.  But there are 
>> times when a list of 6 elements remains 6 elements after the remove 
>> (and remove() returns false), with 4 of them now null (not removed, 
>> but actually a null element), so in when I return to the 
>> listIterator() above and get my next() element, the element is null.
>>
>> It's as if my Element objects are not unique in the list in terms of 
>> equals/hashCode as my elements should never be nulled out.
>>
>> I am not sure why an element I find by iterating cannot then be 
>> removed. How could it fail to remove? Why would it change other list 
>> elements to NULL instead?  Is this not a valid usage pattern?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> David
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>